I have always assumed the further away from math and physics a field is, the higher the probability of any given “research” to be false. Even biology, I might give 50% odds at best, but that is due to the difficulty of observing and measuring in that field. Anything past biology might as well be as fiction due to how easy it is to come up with whatever results you want.
I think that theoretical math and physics are special, but probably not in the way you assume. It's just that there isn't a whole lot of grant money, prestige, or influence associated with them (unless you accomplish something truly exceptional).<p>In contrast, computer science is very close to math and should be <i>more</i> verifiable, but there's plenty of dubious results published every year, simply because it's more profitable to game the system. For example, I'd wager that 50%+ of academic claims related to information security are bogus or useless. Similarly, in physics, a lot of materials science breakthroughs are suspect.
I appreciate that physics and math are simple, reductive, and first principles enough to be tractable. Solving easier problems always has better optics so long as all problems look equivalent. I'm guilty myself, only rising to neuroscience and relatively superficially at that...
I fully expect that future programs for formalizing mathematics will reveal that most sufficiently complex proofs are riddled with gaps and errors, and that some of them actually led to false results.<p><i>Annals of Mathematics</i> once published a supposed proof (related to intersection bodies IIRC) for a statement that turned out to be false, and it was discovered only by someone else proving the opposite, not by someone finding an error.
Quantum physics, due to its own "difficulty of observing and measuring", has its fair share of nonsense too
Oh I'm sure the grifters will find ways in. The other disciplines may have provided a "moat" for the past few decades, but it won't last forever.